Mark West

All of this elaborate setup, of course, is in service of trying to get lost in his writing, which is the goal of pretty much every writer, to lose time, to get into a flow state.

Dahl also used music to try to get there.

Here he is on the long-running British radio show, Desert Island Discs, from 1979.

I never used to start writing in the morning

The other most important decision for a writer is how long a stretch to write for.

According to Barry Farrell again, Dahl rarely ever worked in the evening.

Dahl's ideal schedule was a session from 10 a.m.

to noon in the morning and another from 3 to 6 in the afternoon.

Two good stints with a solid break in between.

Here's Dahl again on the author's eye.

When I was trying to break in as a writer, I would write all day, banker's hours.

But over time, you realize so many of those hours are just wasted.

My favorite thinker on this subject is Oliver Berkman.

In his essay on the three or four hours rule for getting creative work done, he writes, He continues, quote,

Charles Darwin, at work on the theory of evolution, toiled for two 90-minute periods and one one-hour period per day.

Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Ingmar Bergman, and many more all basically followed suit.

The lesson here is to ring-fence three or four hours of undisturbed focus, ideally when your energy levels are highest.

Just focus on protecting four hours, and don't worry if the rest of the day is characterized by the usual scattered chaos, Berkman explains, and you will be shocked at how much you get done if you just consistently put in three to four hours a day, which is precisely what Dahl always did.

Let's turn now to what Dahl's elaborately thought-out writing process actually led to.

I want to speak to someone who can talk a little more specifically about the books.